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Friends or Enemies
Nowadays, the role of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, is changing the
way how we get information. Journalists from the School of Social Communication of
the Universidad Central de Venezuela made a poll about Which means of
communication (mass media) do young people use in Venezuela to get world breaking
news. Almost 60% of the ones polled affirmed that they prefer using social networks
instead of traditional media as newspapers. Based on these results, young people use
twitter more than newspapers to be informed. However, is twitter a reliable source to
red news?
Twitter has some advantages. First, Using this social network gives the possibility to
have a quick update on currents news. Readers do not need to wait until the next edition
of the print newspaper to know the outcome of an event. In fact, twitter users can give
their opinions or reports at the same time of the story. This means that news can spread
faster with this social network than newspapers.
Because of this, many press agencies have created their twitter accounts. Also, we could
see a new tendency of bloggers and Citizen Journalists that they do not have an
academic degree in journalism or communication sciences, but they do the same work
that a journalist does.
Nonetheless, newspapers are not dead. Most of the news we see on twitter is
misreported. People share information that is not confirmed. This creates chaos and
confusion, causing rumors that in the most part of the cases are false at the end.
Whereas, journalist who were trained on the science of reporting, and have developed
skills such as hard-working, responsibility, objectivity, attention to details, and the
famous nose of the journalist, make them a much better source. Furthermore,
journalist know how to manage information and present it organized in an article that
you can just read in a newspaper.
As a consequence, we could not put in a versus social networks as twitter against
newspapers because they are just two ways where the information can be shown to the
readers. They are more friends than enemies.
5 Reasons Why Facebook and Twitter Are No Replacement for a Real Newspaper